Lewis Hamilton’s Chinese Grand Prix DSQ could have stemmed from his failure to complete a race simulation for Ferrari in F1 2025 pre-season testing in Bahrain.

That is the claim of Sky F1 reporter Ted Kravitz, who suspects that it wasn’t a coincidence that Hamilton and Ferrari were caught out after the first dry race of the new season in Shanghai.

Lewis Hamilton suffers second F1 DSQ just in 18 months

Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc finished sixth and fifth respectively at last weekend’s Chinese GP, but both were disqualified after the race for separate offences.

While Leclerc was excluded due to a fuel irregularity, Hamilton was undone by excessive wear to the skid blocks of his SF-25 car.

It marked the second time in 18 months that Hamilton has been hit with a DSQ for excessive skid block wear having been excluded for the same offence at the 2023 United States Grand Prix.

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Hamilton’s disqualification came after he collected his first win for Ferrari by converting pole position into victory in Saturday’s sprint race in Shanghai.

However, the 40-year-old endured a difficult main race as he struggled for pace against Leclerc despite damage to his team-mate’s front wing, at one point suggesting that he should swap places with the faster Leclerc.

With the season-opening Australian Grand Prix held in wet conditions, the Chinese GP represented Hamilton’s first full race distance as a Ferrari driver.

Hamilton had intended to complete a race simulation on the final day of F1’s three-day test in Bahrain last month, but saw his running end early after his Ferrari developed a technical problem, understood to be related to the hydraulics.

Appearing on Sky F1, Kravitz claimed that Ferrari and Hamilton may have discovered the issue with the ride height had the seven-time World Champion managed to complete his race sim in testing.

He said: “I had a chat with Fred Vasseur [Ferrari team principal] on Thursday [in China] – he was just hanging around by the TV pen, probably waiting for someone more important with an actual confirmed meeting time with Fred Vasseur.

“I just went up to him and said: ‘How are you doing?’

“And kind of out of nowhere, he said two things: first of all, Lewis’ race performance in Melbourne was really compromised from not really having a practice race in Bahrain testing, where we had a technical problem which stopped [him] doing the race [simulation].

“And then the second thing he said was about the team radio [communications in Australia, where Hamilton was criticised for a number of awkward interactions with his race engineer].

“He said: ‘[I] don’t think this is a thing. It’s not a problem, they’re all absolutely fine.’

“I don’t think it’s insignificant that the plank wear thing happened in the first dry race.

“I have a feeling it’s something carried over from Bahrain testing where they didn’t manage to do a race simulation and the first dry race that Lewis has had was the Chinese Grand Prix and then they discover this thing.”

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Hamilton’s disqualification in China came after it emerged that Ferrari also encountered problems with the ride height of the SF-25 in Australia.

A report in Italy claimed that Ferrari discovered that the car was running too close to the ground after Leclerc set the pace in Friday’s FP2 session in Melbourne.

Fearing that excessive wear to the skid blocks would run the risk of disqualification, the team raised the ride height for the remainder of the weekend, leaving the SF-25 running in a heavily compromised state at Albert Park.

Leclerc and Hamilton went on to produce a disappointing performance, qualifying a distant seventh and eighth before slipping to ninth and 10th on race day.

Ferrari’s double disqualification means the team currently sit fifth, level on points with Williams, in the Constructors’ standings – 61 points adrift of reigning World Champions and runaway leaders McLaren.

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